I think we've collectively made our points - maybe one of us should now answer the embedded font question which started this thread, (restated in #55) , just to clear up the "how to do it / can it be done " point.

I doubt the OP still lurks here, unless he has a very thick skin, but the answer may be of some use to other amateurs or pros.

I must confess that find the original question hard to understand & don't know the answer myself, but surely those XML declarations should not be in every <p> tag line

@Cybmole:

Actually, we don't need to. Not being my usual cranky old self--he figured it out. He had originally put a manual call to the font in EVERY paragraph (, it makes my head hurt), but then wanted the font to be used "in the entire document." He finally noodled out how to put in an external SS and embed the font to achieve what he wanted.

@ExaltedWombat:

Meh. I rather like font embedding. I concur that it has the obvious drawbacks, but there is still pleasure in looking at what is clearly a carefully-crafted book--and that includes fonts, and sometimes illustrations. One need only look at Jellby's lovely work to appreciate that eBooks don't have to look like word-processed documents.

With regard to the "the conventional workflow of importing to Word, then to HTML, then to Sigil," I don't know anyone who imports TO Word, then on from there, but most of us, of course, receive our files in Word, or some word-equivalent. If you have a macro, like Toxaris', for exporting relatively clean HTML from Word, or, if like most of my shop, you have built in regex-clips in NoteTabPro, that are looking for certain standard Word cruft, and removing same, it's a 10-minute procedure. Are you suggesting starting off with the text inside Sigil? Using it like, say, Jutoh?

I agree, though, that we, too, spend some time tarting up perfectly good books so that a client can see precisely what they want--and this is almost 100% of the time for a client with an iPad, using iBooks as their reader. The other issue, of course, are those that use ADE but still can't wrap their heads around reflowability ("Can you please move that line up to the 'next page?'" type requests), but that's an issue of client education, which I personally find exhausting. Hell, I wrote an 80-page "ebook fundamentals" sort of thing, laying out all the "sorta basics" (ebooks don't have pages, running headers/footers, yadda), but I can't get them to read it, , naturally. Heck, I even used boatloads of pics, too!